Turning Point Responds to Graham Allen’s Report on Early Intervention

"Graham Allen's review makes some pertinent suggestions into how
best to tackle social challenges and make long term savings in the
process. However, there have been a number of reviews similar
to this and now it is important for political leadership to be
applied to early intervention - something which we all know
works.

"Young people have a tendency to follow in their parents
footsteps. In our most deprived communities, there are many
families who are stuck in a never-ending cycle of intergenerational
worklessness, poor mental health and drug and alcohol misuse.
It is therefore imperative that we take action at the earliest
possible stage, in order to avoid leaving these families
languishing on benefits for years to come.

"Turning Point has long been arguing that parents themselves
should be prioritised into treatment, and that interventions should
be given to address the needs of the whole family. Our SUFSS
service is an example of how this can work in practice. The
service successfully brings substance misusing parents and their
children together in order to stabilise substance misuse and
domestic functioning, improve parenting skills and ultimately
prevent children from being taken into care and avoid the
associated costs.

"Early intervention services such as these are vital to society
and we support the proposal to increase funding for them by 1% each
year. It is true that we are living in difficult economic
times but if we fail to act now, our children are likely to suffer
disproportionately."